The veto added more bars and hotels to new commercial interest increase prices of businesses

Snack Bar La Rambla Barcelona

Keep the original rudder in the most tourist street in Barcelona is not only a matter of sentimentality. It is almost pigheadedness when parading deals year after year, sometimes astronomical, for entrepreneurs lifelong step yield to investors. He knows well the fifth Josep Masana manning the cafe restaurant La Cava Universal, at the end of the Rambla. Less than two years on the front line 160 meet, has already lost count of the proposals. “But we are too deeply rooted to leave” sentence. Just half a dozen bars and restaurants, the most sought after in the area along with hotels, business remain in the hands of historical headlines hovering around the century of survival.

Next week will match the final approval of the special management plan Street passersby 100 million, which comes after years of debate, with the celebration of 75 years of experience restaurant Amaya, symbol that little local resistance. The new organization will be a step forward to improve the Rambla of the future, but late for many. Overdose tourism success and brutal speculation in the area have resulted in an overview of low commercial, difficult recompose identity.

Among the hearth, the last to close has been “Casa Joan”, a classic. It is closed for several months because the owner has failed to take the new hire. In the neighborhood it is said, unconfirmed, that the income of local scarce available ranges from 30,000 to 40,000 euros per month.

The special plan will clear the boulevard, will accommodate sidewalks, subtract space to the central business … but the commercial direction of its side, its fixed establishments, no going back. Gone are always a force to pressure checkbook Russians, Pakistanis or indigenous investors. The turn over two decades to trade in souvenirs and fast food slowed uses a plan that limits these establishments but increases the price of transfers of activities and rents. It should only hope that what lies ahead is of “a bet of more quality,” Joan Oliveras Bagués assumes, president of the association Amics, Veïns i Comerciants de la Rambla. A subjective label in an increasingly globalized sector.

Café de la Opera-Rambla-Barcelona

DIGNIFICATION

The group is optimistic about the landing of some well-known fashion brands (breaking the hegemony of ‘fast food’), or quality hotels with their restaurants, as Bagués or DO, or eating establishments able to attract Barcelona, like the recent Ultramarinos or renovated House Guinart, or can draw your attention, as the imminent opening theme of the NBA. The group also entertainment and dining East Coast has begun work on a local. “Welcome the dignity of the offer,” stresses Oliveras. But just browse tourist sites to discover that travelers to disown much of the gastronomic proposal from the Rambla, which continues to operate while the visitor flows occur.

Masana is aware that the Rambla is expensive (for a glass of sangria even paid 10 euros) and local public just treading. It welcomes cafes offer 1.50 euros when the competition comes to have doubled. The advantage is that they often resistant to own their home, like them, 158 years ago. The same is true in the renovated Amaya, where for 15 euros you can still take a bottle of good wine. Also in the Núria bar, from 1926 to the Canaletas fountain, they made a set-up two years ago to revive hard and try to seduce the Barcelona who renounces the area. To this end they opted for winks and drinks at affordable prices, the hand of a new generation of Cortadellas. The dishes or tapas are another resource that tries to stay in a rotation axis where the public is imposed.

Las Ramblas Barcelona Terrace

POP WINDS

Rosa Doria still commanding the Café Opera, 1928, another native stronghold. Also prices under control, ownership of property, account. They have offered to leave scandal figures, but says that money does not make “happy”. “Today what you have and not tomorrow. I prefer to give good service, this is a way of life”. It also has a son, Andreu, who was able to continue the business.

Singular case of the Cosmos, the unique bar of pop airs that since 1927 has seen hundreds of thousands of customers for their tables. Avelino Ferrer takes 44 years spent in the house, which from about 30 ago is in the hands of the workers themselves, about 25, has also in charge of the apartments in the building. They are for rent, but with a permanent contract. The large sums offered to them by a transfer (especially before the crisis) have not compensated for them to be so many to spread and many of them on a strip of outplacement complicated age. Since the Olympics there are “many more tourists, but we are also much more competition.” They have undergone few changes, unlike Moka, 1934 and in the hands of the Matamala family for over three decades, or La Poma, in the early 70s and always with the same family owner reformed.